


this is how i show my love,

by oldtimeyryan



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Almost a scene rewrite, Don't read if you are not up to date with series 3, M/M, Spoilers for His Last Vow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-16
Updated: 2014-01-16
Packaged: 2018-01-08 22:30:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1138186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oldtimeyryan/pseuds/oldtimeyryan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s like John’s brain is moving sluggishly. He feels like it’s all happening again, complete with the buzzing in his ears and the loud sound of his breathing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this is how i show my love,

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this as a drabble for a friend because I felt that this is how this scene should have gone, (well, something like this) and she wanted John being Season-2!John. So this is it.
> 
> This is un-beta'd as of yet, but I will be sending it to my beta promptly.
> 
> Happy New Year and Season 3, everybody! I've been doing Sherlock fanfiction for two years now, and so thank you for the two years of beautiful words and kudos. I love you all!

It’s like John’s brain is moving sluggishly. He feels like it’s all happening again, complete with the buzzing in his ears and the loud sound of his breathing. Magnussen and whoever attacked Janine were gone, but Sherlock wasn’t. Sherlock was on his back, eyes closed and chest hardly moving. 

Oh, God no.

John immediately went to Sherlock’s side, and looks him over quickly. Gunshot to the ribs. Dark blood slowly staining his shirt. John pressed his fingers to Sherlock’s neck, feeling for his pulse. It was there, fluttering weakly, like he was just hanging on. 

“Shit,” John choked, quickly pressing his hand onto the bullet wound to stop the bleeding and using the other to pull out his phone and call 999. “Shit, shit, come on Sherlock, stay with me—Yeah, yeah, hi. I need an ambulance. There’s been a shooting.”

John could see the blood on the pavement, oozing across the grey like paint. He couldn’t reach him that time, only to grab his wrist. He couldn’t save him then, not that he really needed to but at the time… No, John. Don’t think about that. Focus on him, here and now. Save him this time.

The dispatcher told him an ambulance was on-route to his destination and John hung up before he could say thank you. He pressed both hands to the gunshot wound, his breathing coming out in quick gasps. Don’t you dare do this to me again, Sherlock Holmes.

_‘This phone call, it’s my note. That’s what people do, don’t they? Leave a note?’_

Stop it John. That isn’t happening now. 

_‘Goodbye, John.’_

Dammit, John, just focus on saving him now! Keep the pressure here, stop the blood flow. There wasn’t any blood spreading behind him that he could see, which means there was no exit wound. Bullet still in him, good. Cork in a bottle, keeping the blood in, well… Almost.  _Okay, okay Watson. Keep it together. This isn’t Sholto, or Murray, and this isn’t St. Barts. Just… Hold on to him._  

It seemed an eternity before the paramedics arrived. Sherlock’s blood was sticky on his hands when he was made to move. They were a bright red, and the smell was gunpowder and copper reminded him so much of Afghanistan when he tried to stand his leg buckled. 

“Is this how you found him?” A medic asked sternly, pressing an oxygen mask to Sherlock’s face as two others lifted him onto a stretcher.

“Uh, yeah,” John cleared his throat, staring at the blood on his hands. “I didn’t hear the shot, and I didn’t see who shot him. His pulse was, uh,” John lost the words. Shit! 

“You’ve kept him alive this long.” the man said calmly. John swallowed and stabled himself. 

“I need to go with him,” John lifted his head. “He’s my… Best friend. I need to be with him.”

_‘No, no, he’s my friend, please, let me through.’_

The medic nodded at him, and John clung to the bar of the stretcher, smearing the blood over the metal. 

“Stay with me, Sherlock Holmes,” John whispered. “I swear to God, you’re not going to die on me again. Not again.”

Sherlock began to drop when they got into the ambulance. John’s heart pressed into his throat, and he pressed himself as close to Sherlock as possible. 

“We’re losing him!” he snapped. He felt tears pooling in his eyes, but he definitely was not going to do that here. No one but Mary had ever seen him cry, but he knew that what happened with Mary was… Well. “Sherlock, for fucks sake, stay with me!”

“Excuse me, sir, you can’t crowd the bed!”

“I’m a doctor, and I’ve dealt with enough gunshots,” John retorted, his voice stiff. “I  _invaded_ bloody Afghanistan.”

The woman just looked at him, swallowed and turned to adjust the oxygen tank. John shuddered, his hands curling into fists. He leaned his face close to Sherlock’s, his left hand shaking. He flexed his fingers. 

“This is hard for me,” John whispered, his voice still rough and stiff. “But you  _can’t_ die, not for real. You’re Sherlock Holmes… You can come back from this, like you always do.  _Do it for me, Sherlock_. Please. I—”

“Come away, please sir,” said a different voice. John pulled away from him. He was pale, much, much too pale, and sweat was beading on his face and forehead. His chest was hardly rising at all, and John went to cover his mouth with his hand but remembered that they were still covered in Sherlock’s blood. Why hadn’t he cleaned them? Did he refuse? Probably. 

“We need to get him into surgery immediately,” the woman said, pressing her hands onto Sherlock’s chest. “How far are we?”

“A few minutes,” her colleague replied. “Dammit, his heart rates dropped!” The woman started chest compressions, and John could only watch as Sherlock kept slipping away from him. 

_‘One more miracle.’_

Don’t do it, Sherlock. Hang on. 

_‘Don’t be dead.’_

The waiting room was practically empty at this time of night. John had cleaned his hand, and now they shook by his sides as he paced laps of the floor. Sherlock went into surgery almost two hours ago, and there had not been a single word. That had to be a good thing, they would have told him if Sherlock flat-lined. John’s leg burned with pain and he sat down in the closest hair, hanging his head and gripping his hair.  _Jesus,_ Sherlock. 

_‘Cause of death was a crushed right side of the skull, with avulsion of the cranium and brain. The victim—Sorry. The victim also sustained multiple rib fractures and a broken right ulna. There was serious internal bleeding. All injuries are congruent with having fallen from a four storey building.’_

No. He was going to make it this time. He had to. Sherlock had changed, somehow, and he wouldn’t do that again. He couldn’t.

“Doctor Watson?” John looked up, meeting the eyes of the surgeon in front of him. His heart began to choke him again.

“Yes?” His voice came out stronger than anticipated. Small mercy.

“We stabilised him. He’s alive.”

John shook with relief. “Oh thank God. Is he going to be alright?”

“He probably won’t wake up for a few days. He was under excessive trauma, but I’m sure he will make a full recovery.”

“Can I see him?” John had already stood, the room brightening at the edges. He wasn’t going to wait; Sherlock needed him. He needed Sherlock. Christ.

“I don’t think anyone can see him but next of kin.” The doctor replied, and he looked fairly sympathetic, honestly. John huffed a breath through his nose.

“I can contact his next of kin and I’ll be let in. I think you’ll find I’m pretty much next of kin anyway.” John said before he thought the sentence through. Oh. Well, at least he didn’t outright say it.

“…Of course. I’ll take you to him.” The doctor smiled and took John to Sherlock’s room. He lay, his chest rising and falling almost evenly. He probably wasn’t even using his lungs. His eyes were closed, and his lips ere very slightly parted. His skin was a deadly white, and his eyes were rimmed in red and appeared to be sunken. John cleared his throat, licked his lips and nodded. 

He pulled a white plastic chair over and sat down. The door to the room closed and then John was alone. He exhaled sharply and linked his fingers in his lap.

“You’re a miracle worker,” John said. He didn’t look at Sherlock, but out the window across from his bed. “You keep proving to me time and time again that you are a hero, Sherlock. This is what, twice you’ve come back from death since I’ve known you. Granted, the first time was because you lied to me, but I forgave you. I,” John closed his eyes and pressed his lips together for a while, trying to work out the words before he said them. “Even talking to you while you’re unconscious is hard, Sherlock, because I know somewhere in that great brain of yours you are listening. There are things I haven’t said to you, things I, um, should have. You heard most of them at your grave. But there’s one that… That you  _do_ need to know.” John hung his head, breathing heavily. Keep it together now. He’s not dead.

John reached out and grabbed Sherlock’s hand and squeezed it gently. There was no response, of course, but John felt comforted that he could touch Sherlock now. He was alive, and he was going to be okay.

Day 3 proved to be one of the worst. John had been asleep in his resident chair when Mycroft had come to visit. The elder Holmes looked calm and collected, but his eyes were dark with something almost like anguish.

“My brother is a fool,” he said without looking at John. John licked his lips and stretched his back.

“Yeah, morning to you too, Mycroft.”

“It’s three in the afternoon,” Mycroft replied, tapping the tip of his umbrella on the floor. “And Sherlock Holmes is a fool.”

John cocked his head slightly to one side. He had gotten used to both of the Holmes’ mannerisms, but he had never seen Mycroft look so… Not Mycroft. “I gathered as much.” John let his eyes rest on Sherlock. He still wasn’t breathing on his own, and hadn’t even made a move to wake up.

“This is the first time he’s taken a bullet for you, yet it most likely won’t be the last.”

“For me? Mycroft, I was in a different room, and I wasn’t in any danger.”

“And yet here Sherlock lies. I think you must have been in more danger than you thought,” Mycroft looked towards him. “You were the making of my brother once, John. Now, I fear, you’ve both become far too attached. Well, it always was a weakness with Sherlock.” One of Mycroft’s hands brushed along Sherlock’s forehead, moving one of his curls from his face. His face was stern but fond. John swallowed the three rude retorts he had. 

“He’s going to be fine.”

“Is he? A relapsed drug addict with a healing gunshot wound that he can only use morphine for? You’re a doctor, John. We both know where this leads.” Mycroft dropped his hand. “Take care of him. You’re doing a far better job than I ever could have.” He smiled sadly at Sherlock, then his face went stony and he left the room. 

John closed his eyes, not from still being tired but from the impact of Mycroft’s words. He had practically told him that Sherlock loved him. John wasn’t as idiotic as Sherlock once led him to believe. He knew the signs of love. Dammit.

What was worse is that John now had reciprocated feelings and for the first time in his life he didn’t know what to do with them.

The second part of the worst third day was Sherlock’s decent into internal bleeding again. Apparently it shouldn’t have happened unless Sherlock had moved prematurely. John could have had a panic attack when he was told, he couldn’t exactly remember. The last thing he remembered was kissing Sherlock’s forehead before he went to get something to eat, a coffee and to take a piss. When he came back, well… Sherlock had been moved to Intensive Care for the night. Which means John wasn’t allowed in. So John was forced home, where he sat up all night staring at his phone, expecting the call to come and say his final goodbyes. 

There was nothing, for which he was grateful. 

On the sixth day, Sherlock woke up. John was playing something on his phone when he heard the soft whisper. John put his phone down at looked at Sherlock. His eyes were open and they were blinking owlishly. John breathed a sigh of relief, and scooted closer.

“Mary,” Sherlock said, blinking his eyes slowly. The uttering of his ex-fiance’s name startled John a little. He hadn’t seen nor heard from Mary since their relationship ended. The pain of her cheating still burned John whenever he thought about it; but this wasn’t the time for that.

“Something you’re not telling me?” John joked casually. Sherlock swallowed and tilted his head to John.

“John.” He sounded a little shocked to see him. He blinked again, in that slow way that John was used to seeing when Sherlock had just woken up. Sherlock flexed his hand and John reached out and took it. John grinned at the slightly surprised look on Sherlock’s face. 

“Yeah, yeah, I’m right here. You’re fine,” John used his other hand to soothe back Sherlock’s curls. They were all messy again. “You’re an idiot.”

“Because… I got shot…?” Sherlock asked, his words slow, like he was trying to work out how to actually sound each syllable. 

“Because you ran off without saying anything to me,” John laughed a little. It was dry and held no humour. “I thought I lost you, dammit. Again!”

“Don’t shout John… And I’m not a child anymore…” Sherlock turned his head away but he didn’t move his hand. John closed his eyes, and then sighed.

“Sorry,” he took a deep breath. “Sorry. It’s just, the last time I couldn’t protect you—”

“I threw myself off a building…” Sherlock cut him off. “I don’t need to be reminded…”

John huffed through his nose, irritation and adoration flowing through him all at once. Sherlock exhaled in pain.

“Morphine, John…” Sherlock’s hand shook in his. 

“Right, yeah, of course,” John went over to the machine and turned it up. Not too much, but enough. Sherlock slumped down, and closed his eyes. John looked at him, and the fear that he might lose him again hit him like a ton of bricks.

He didn’t honestly realise he’d kissed Sherlock until it had happened. It was short, chaste, and quick. Sherlock was looking at him with wide eyes.

“John,” his voice was soft, small even. His mouth moved but no sound came out. John smiled a little, before running a hand through his hair.

“I meant to say this, years ago, but I was so confused, and I didn’t want to ruin your… Celibacy run. But, it’s hard, this is hard knowing what I do about myself, because I never thought I was interested, and I just need to show you because I can’t  _tell_  you.” John swallowed before leaning down and kissing him again. And Sherlock lay still for a bit, before the heart monitor began to accelerate as Sherlock began reciprocating. 

The most embarrassing part was the nurses running in to make sure Sherlock wasn’t arresting, and catching them kissing. John lifted his head and looked at them, coughed and then nodded. “Right. Forgot about those.” One of the nurses blushed, and then moved to check Sherlock over, while the others fiddled with all the machines. John waited by the wall, his eyes on Sherlock the entire time. And he was smiling.

Always good to get something like that off your chest.

 


End file.
